This invention relates to a self-tailing winch.
In most winches the rope must be paid out by hand or at least with hand assistance. This has obvious disadvantages which the present invention overcomes.
Heretofore, self-tailing winches have involved expensive V-groove pulley wheels having indentations made in them corresponding to the indentations in the rope, but in the present invention this is not necessary and, in fact, is considered to be undesirable as an unnecessary expense which does not increase the effectiveness of the device of the present invention. Also, the self-tailing winches heretofore in use have presented difficulties due to different tensions and different speeds at the point where the rope was fed from the drum to the pulley wheel. Sometimes these differential tensions tend to break the rope. Differential speeds between two such portions inevitably result in differential forces which cause trouble even when they do not result in actual breakage of the rope. It is important that the line speed of the rope unit entering the wheel be identical to the line speed at which it leaves the winch drum. However, they cannot be the same unless the bottom diameter of the groove into which they enter is the same as the diameter of the drum which they leave.
Further, limitations in use are present when a winch can be used with only one particular type of rope, or one diameter of rope. In the present invention it is possible to vary the rope diameter and the type of rope widely and still obtain satisfactory results, all without causing the differential speeds referred to above, whereas this was not the case with prior art winches which were intended to be self-tailing.
Thus, among the objects of the invention are to provide a self-tailing winch which is both simpler in its general configuration and also more adaptable.
Another object of the invention is to provide a self-tailing winch having provision for taking a wide variety of rope sizes and types, while still assuring proper payout.
Another object of the invention is to provide a self-tailing winch with identical line speeds when entering the wheel and leaving the drum from which the rope is paid out, and to provide this even though the rope size may be varied.